Pakistan Says 41 Killed in Market Bombing

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 12 -- A suicide bomber apparently targeting Pakistani soldiers killed 41 people Monday in the most recent in a string of bloody attacks on high-profile targets.

The blast, which occurred near an army convoy at a security checkpoint, took place at a market in the northwestern district of Shangla and killed mostly civilians. The area is near the Swat Valley, an area where a brutal Taliban presence was flushed out by Pakistani troops earlier this year.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Monday's bombing, whose force was multiplied when it also detonated explosives being carried in army vehicles, said Shangla Police Chief Jehanzeb Khan. It came a day after Pakistani commandos ended a 22-hour standoff with armed Islamist fighters who had taken 42 hostages at Pakistan's army headquarters.

In Rawalpindi, a military spokesman told reporters that three more army commandos had died from injuries they sustained while capturing the leader of that militant group.

A total of 23 people, including 11 soldiers, were killed in the brazen attack, said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, an army spokesman. The ringleader, who was seriously injured when he detonated explosives to ward off the commandos, is in custody but is unconscious, Abbas said.

Abbas said the attack was planned by a Taliban-affiliated sect that trained in South Waziristan, a tribal region where Pakistan has been vowing for months to launch an offensive. He said "80 percent" of terrorist attacks within Pakistan are planned in that mountainous region, a Taliban and al-Qaeda stronghold bordering Afghanistan.

"We are judging the situation there," Abbas said. "We will decide what exactly is the right time for the operation."

A Taliban spokesman told the Associated Press that the army headquarters attack was the "first small effort, and a present to the Pakistani and American governments." He said additional attacks were forthcoming as part of a campaign to avenge the death of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed by a U.S. missile strike in August.

A day after the attack, Pakistani commandos stormed the building within the nation's army headquarters where the hostages were held, freeing 39 of them and ending a 22-hour standoff with their armed Islamist captors that revealed deep vulnerabilities in Pakistan's defense systems.

The siege began Saturday morning when a squad of fighters armed with guns and grenades brazenly attacked the army command center in Rawalpindi, which is adjacent to Islamabad, the capital.

The Saturday attack seemed designed to publicly humiliate Pakistan's armed forces, which have been planning an offensive against Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents in the volatile tribal region of South Waziristan, analysts said. As the standoff developed, it cast doubt on the military's ability to fend off the extremists and raised questions about whether the fighters -- who wore soldiers' uniforms and drove a van with military plates -- had infiltrated the army.

But once the tense showdown ended, the military began winning praise. Security analysts commended the rescue operation, during which commandos fatally shot one militant before he could detonate his suicide vest.